


The Calm Before A Storm

by iamthefacebehindthemask



Series: Victuuri Tumblr Fics [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10075133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamthefacebehindthemask/pseuds/iamthefacebehindthemask
Summary: Early mornings had become Victor’s least favorite time of the day.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for @askvicktuuri on Tumblr! 
> 
> Prompt:
> 
> "Do you miss me?"
> 
> "I miss who you used to be."

Early mornings had become Victor’s least favorite time of the day. 

It was not that he hated the sunrise, or the sky changing colors from black to blue, with navy and shades of orange in between. He liked the sound of birds chirping (at least when it was warm enough for the birds to be there). He had been an early riser for as long as he could remember. And yet, in the twenty-seventh year of his life, he found himself dreading the crack of dawn. the very aspects that he enjoyed were now collectively the bane of his existence.

Because the solitude of the moment forced him to think.

When his phone rang, pulling him out of his reverie, he was grateful for the caller. It was Yakov.

“Victor, come to the rink a little late today”, his coach barked into the phone. The gratefulness dissipated quickly.

“Okay.”

Victor set the phone down and looked around the house. It appeared a little messy: there were unwashed dishes in the sink, unread newspapers were strewn all over the coffee table, and a full laundry bag in the corner.

He sighed with relief. At least he had something to occupy himself with in this unprecedented free time.

Later, when he showed up at the rink, his coach beckoned him to the side to talk to him. They spent the next twenty minutes editing various technical elements before he went to warm up. Victor smiled easily for the first time all day as he glided across the rink. At last, he thought, his mind would become blank, just like a clean slate.

Going to practice was an escape. By himself, Victor would overflow with thoughts of his career, which people were surmising was about to end. He knew he could go on; he certainly had the ability to, despite his age. And the fact that people didn’t expect him to was almost like a bait. A bait to defy expectations, to surprise the audience, once again, like a true entertainer. It almost made him reconsider the new elements in his program;  _after all_ , he thought,  _am I not surprising enough already?_

He didn’t let anyone get even the slightest hint of any of this, obviously. Playing a role onscreen completely unaffected by the ups and downs of off-screen life is another trait of a good entertainer, after all.

Determination emanating from his eyes, Victor prepared to execute the first jump of his program.

* * *

If he had learned anything by being a coach, it was that understanding how people work, as a skill, was both a boon and a bane.

Victor, as he was at that moment, was like the calm before a storm.

As he watched his pupil run through his program, Yakov came to the conclusion that, yes, something was wrong.  _In fact_ , he admitted,  _something had been wrong for a while_. Victor was still flawless and unbeatable in his ability to exude emotion through his skating, and those emotions would pass off as genuine to his audience. But his coach, who had watched not only him but also several other skaters during his lifetime, could not be fooled. It was as if someone had extinguished the candle that was his soul, the birthplace of all passion.

It had taken a while, but Yakov finally had a way of explaining what he was seeing Victor go through. His heart ached, not unfamiliarly; after all, he had seen this happen far too often with far too many people, and not just his students.

And just like every other time he had encountered this, Yakov had no idea how to approach the problem.

He thought of a younger Victor, skating effortlessly with a smile full of real happiness, and wondered what comprised the smile he saw nowadays.

“Yakov?”

He realized he had been spacing out, and his pupil had probably been calling out to him for a while. Victor had stopped skating, presumably done with practice, and was leaning on his forearms against the barricade right across from his coach.   

“Were you daydreaming again?” he teased. Yakov scoffed, but his expression morphed into one of nostalgia.

“I just had a flashback to one of your performances from when you were much younger”, he replied. “And a much more obedient student”.

The indignant squawk from Victor brought a small smile on his coach’s face.

“Do you miss me? Or rather, that version of me?”

He didn’t know what spurred him. Perhaps it was because Yakov was a frank person, or perhaps it was because he had known Victor for years. Nevertheless, the words came surprisingly easily.

“I miss who you used to be, Vitya.”

For the first time, that perfect façade revealed a crack, a flaw. Victor looked at Yakov, lips parted slightly, breath hitched as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. As if he couldn’t believe someone else had noticed what was going on inside him. And, they both didn’t know it, but in the future, Victor would be grateful for those words, because his coach (of all the people in the world) acknowledging that something was going on only fueled his desperation to find a solution.

But in that moment, Yakov’s words shattered  _everything_.

* * *

And a few months later at the Grand Prix exhibition skate, when Victor had worn his heart on his sleeve and let the world sense what he was feeling, it was like a weight had been lifted off his chest. News reporters from several countries had raved afterward about his seemingly limitless potential to breathe new life into every performance, never failing to surprise his fan base, year after year.

But what breathed new life into  _him_  was the charming Japanese skater who had, with earnest eyes, somehow coherently asked Victor to engage in a dance battle against him while being completely wasted,  _and won_.

Somewhere in his heart, Victor knew right away that he was going to start looking forward to waking up early in the morning again.

Any spell he had cast on his audience earlier was surely no match for the spell Katsuki Yuuri had cast on him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! All kudos and comments are highly appreciated :)


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